I’m a walking injury chart. Trust me. I bet you can’t tell from my outward appearance, but I have all kinds of crap wrong with me. Most people use injuries as excuses to not do certain workouts. I’ve got plenty of friends who say their wrist is bad, or they have a bum knee or they had shoulder problems back in high school, so they can’t do such and such exercise. Let me take you on a little trip down my injury pipeline. Where do I start? Well, I’ve had my right ankle badly sprained 6 times. It’s led me to be on crutches twice, and in turn, has given me horrible dorsiflexion of my right foot, which makes everything in my knee feel really awkward. I also, in the same foot I have what is called a lisfranc sprain. Basically the ligaments in the middle of the bottom of my foot tore while I was playing basketball. Imagine walking on that. It has thrown off my balance, and stability to a crazy degree. Up the line, on the other leg, I tore my rectus femoris of the bone in my knee. I was running sprints, and on the last sprint of the day, took off, and literally felt it tear right off the bone. I kind of looked like this. Well, the injury did, not the hurdles. Or me. But that’s how I was running. To this day, I have horrible hip flexion on that side, and I cannot push off that leg half as hard as I can on my right, so my gait has changed. On to the next one. I broke my left wrist playing basketball in high school. The resulting effect is that anything on my left hand with too much pressure, for too long, causes pretty uncomfortable pains shooting up my arm. I also had a partial tear in my rotator cuff and labrum in my right shoulder girdle. I didn’t sleep a full night through for about a year, and it still does sometimes cause me to lose sleep. I can no longer throw a baseball or a football naturally, and sometimes raising my right arm above my head initiates some problems. A side note, I work out a minimum of 3 times a week, and sprinkle in some yoga when I’m up for it. My point is this. I’m sure some of you have legitimate aches and pains that need to be addressed before you get into your traditional workouts. Address them, and stop making excuses. Maybe you have to do a month or two of foam rolling and isolation and integration work before you can really take it to a fitness camp or bootcamp class. Seek out an amazing corrective exercise geek (like me) or a physical therapist, and get some sessions under your belt so you know what to do to get back to feeling “normal” when you exercise. Quit telling yourself you can’t do something, and using a crutch to stay away from the one thing that will help your injuries and help YOU move better.
702-462-2678
tonept3@hotmail.com
